In a similar fashion to Thursday’s action, the S&P 500 index futures took an overnight dip followed by a steady rally during Friday’s premarket hours. However, instead of giving up all the progress during the intraday session, bulls added to their gains after fighting off the bears.
The overnight dip came early on, around the time it was announced that China’s Q3 GDP rose at the slowest pace in a year and a half. Soon after, details were released from the People’s Bank of China of how it plans to boost capital markets, and the bulls took back control.
Fairly benign US housing data was released at 8:30am EDT, and the bulls added a few more handles by the time the regular session opened. Similar to Thursday’s session, sellers were ready right off the bat, and took the index futures down to test unchanged. Support held initially, but the bears weren’t quite ready to give way. The good news is, neither were the bulls.
Though it was not a smooth rally, the bulls were able to maintain higher bids as the day progressed. In the afternoon, the premarket high was breached and the index futures found its peak at 5915.50. After reaching that level, buyers seemed to reach a point of exhaustion and sellers took control during the last hour and a half.
The session still concluded in the upper half of the day’s range at 5906, gaining 19 handles. For the week, that makes for a gain of 46.25 handles or 0.79%.
Among the top components of the index, Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) emerged as the biggest gainer. Though the tech giant established a triple-top at all-time highs and retreated, it was still able to advance by $2.85 or 1.23% to close at $235.00 for the day.
That performance was over three times better than the cash index’s advance of 0.38%.
On the other hand, the biggest loser was Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ: AVGO). For the day, the chip designer declined by $1.64 or 0.90% to close at $179.89.
